[...] At Hanford’s new 200 West Pump and Treat plant, Hanford’s largest and most sophisticated plant for cleaning contaminated groundwater, the TEPCO visitors heard about the different systems to strip radioactive and organic chemical pollutants out of water pumped out of the ground.

Clean water then is injected back into the ground on two sides of the plume of contaminated water, helping to keep contamination from spreading.

“We’re using clean water to control the plume,” said Bill Barrett of CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co.

Fukushima might have a more daunting challenge. Hanford is in the desert, but Fukushima is in a mountainous area close to the ocean, [Masumi Ishikawa, general manager of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle Department for TEPCO] said.

Groundwater is close to the surface there, and before the 2011 disaster, it had a pumping program to make sure basements had no leaks. [...]

(a) TRITIUM contamination of the Columbia River; from 2.5 to 13 Bq per litre
(b) Four times more uranium than radium, which is abnormal ratio
(c) Europium-152
(d) said the site continually leaks and drags radioactive elements into the waters that slowly migrate to the Columbia River

> A nuclear engineer said the ground water near the site will remain toxic for hundreds of thousands of years – primarily chromium – salmon laying eggs in this

> At Hanford, they cut down contaminated trees and put stones over a contaminated area – so "everything is hidden"

nuclear proponents should all be implanted with a lethal dose of radioactive material, or cyanide or DDT, in a capsule that eventually degrades. This would remind them that the earth is a singular body, the ecosystem, and eventually the planet-wide lethal dose will poison the system.

The cheetah that can run 70 mph, birds that fly nonstop across oceans…so many animals are in the status of avatars as seen in the popular movie. Man is more like a fragile worm who brought destruction to the earth and her creatures and without remorse. Yet we are nature; such is the irony

I would give them the option; stop the insanity or live with the implant! Of course its not literal, but maybe it SHOULD be. After all, its happening that their containment failure is threatening the lives of all the animals on earth. For me, the salient point is that the huge poisonous risks involved with nuclear were plain to even children, yet now the lives of millions will be destroyed. Neither this stark reality, nor our complaints have enlightened the perpetrators of the madness. What would YOU do with those people?

Representative Ed Markey is running for the senate seat vacated by John Kerry in Massachusetts. I don't have any kind of faith in congress or the government in general. Still, If you live in Massachusetts PLEASE support and help Mr Markey get this senate seat. He is firmly anti nuclear and a very green minded guy

SP: Great clip, but certainly we know now after Fukushima that far more than just North Africa will receive fallout. There is no guaranteed haven in the Southern Hemisphere.

The vaunted atmospheric shielding belt of the Equator is not as dense scientists once believed:

Reporting on Fukushima's first major radiation plumes in March-April 2011:

"For the first four weeks, the radioactive materials remained confined to the northern hemisphere, with the equator initially acting as a dividing line between the northern and southern air masses. As of 13 April, radioactivity had spread to the southern hemisphere of the Asia-Pacific region and had been detected at stations located for example in Australia, Fiji, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea."

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